Not much of a man

I'm in the third year of university. I enrol in a massage course through the student union. Over a dozen sign up, but only two of us are men. Everyone takes turns in pairs to practice on one another under the instructor’s oversight. Today I am partnered with an Indian Australian girl, attractive, long-fingered, younger than me. The course is ordered by body parts: today we are doing thighs and calves. “You would have nice legs for a woman” she says. I know instantly what she means, and inwardly concede that it is meant as a complement.

Thanks.

I'm not much of a man.

Later that same year my Geography class is on a week-long field trip in southern New South Wales. We stay in old cottages and cabins. In the morning, those of us prepared to brave the winter, strip off and bathe, naked, in the pebbly shallows of the fast flowing Deua River. The morning is beautiful, sun hidden behind the hills, and freezing. One of the other men – were we really men? – comments on how thin I am. He decides I put him in mind of photos taken after the liberation of prisoners from the concentration camps of World War Two, and nicknames me Belsen Boy. No-one else chooses to pick up his obscene moniker.

Yes, I am an unattractively thin male. I have been aware of this for a long time.